


Nightmare

by wastefulreverie



Series: PhannieMay Shots 2018 [19]
Category: Danny Phantom
Genre: Angst, Blood, Dissection, Experimentation, Gen, Gore, Horror, Identity Reveal, Nightmare, Vivisection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-30
Updated: 2018-12-30
Packaged: 2019-10-01 00:40:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence, Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,794
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17234183
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wastefulreverie/pseuds/wastefulreverie
Summary: Telling their parents should've never ended like this. But despite everything, Maddie and Jack could never accept that their son was a ghost. Even Jazz knew that.





	Nightmare

When Danny made the decision to tell their parents, Jazz supported him every step of the way. The two siblings had planned it out, and even memorized backup plans if the conversation didn't seem like it was going their way. She did everything in her power to guarantee that Danny was mentally prepared for his secret to finally be out in the open, however, it wasn't him that she should've made sure was ready.

Instead, she should've spent more time examining their parents. That was her crucial mistake.

They asked their parents to talk in the living room together, a place with no distractions and felt more homey than the lab or kitchen. Danny was the one who hesitantly asked them to disarm themselves, much to Jack and Maddie's befuddlement. Though, the two parents complied with their son's request, and unstrapped their weapons belts and emptied their pockets of any remaining guns or blasters. Jazz gathered all the weapons and transferred them to the kitchen table, where they could be easily found when this was all over.

When she returned back to the living room, Danny was holding his hand to the back of his neck, avoiding meeting his parents' eyes. She reassuringly squeezed his hand, but quickly let go before he could be embarrassed at her attempt at familial affection.

“What did you want to tell us, Danno?” Jack asked, confused.

Danny's eyes skirted back and forth between both of his parents, before he settled on looking at the wall behind them. “I... I have a confession to make. It's something I've been keeping from you guys a long time now, but you both deserve to know. Just promise me that you won't... freak out.”

“Why would we freak out?” Maddie asked. “What have you been doing, Danny?”

He swallowed. “It's a long story. Just... when I'm telling you everything, can you keep questions to a minimum. I've got everything planned out in my head, and if I have to stop saying it, I don't know if I'll be able to keep it going.”

After sharing a brief glance, Jack and Maddie nodded.

Danny started telling them everything from the beginning. How he had been caught in the portal accident, how he came to realize what had happened to him, and how he had decided to fight off all of the ghosts that came to attack Amity Park. Their parents remained silent throughout the entire explanation. Jazz had initially thought their reaction was a good one, considering they didn't present any threatening body-language.

When Danny had concluded his verbal explanation, he looked at his parents expectantly. No one said a word.

“D – do you guys want me to show you?” Danny broke the ice.

Jack and Maddie still remained silent. Jazz narrowed her eyes.

“Mom, Dad?” she asked. “Can you answer Danny's question? Is it okay if he shows you?”

Maddie clenched the side of the couch. “It's not possible.” Her voice was scratchy and hoarse, and her eyes indicated blatant denial.

“But it is,” Danny said. “I've been this way for over a year, Mom. I _am_ sorry I kept it from you. I was just... scared.”

Maddie cringed and refused to meet his gaze. Since she was failing to recognize the truth, Danny decided that he might as well show them. It would help them accept that everything he said was real, and that he wasn't just making things up.

“Going ghost,” he muttered, letting the white halo form around his waist. It panned up and down, revealing his other form and ghostly persona. Jazz smiled encouragingly at him, until she noticed her parents' sudden reaction.

Maddie had jumped off of the couch, while Jack had reached for his weapons belt, which was no longer there. Protectively, Jazz leaped in front of her father to prevent him from trying to harm Danny. A forlorn sense of betrayal was present in every member of the room, and nothing was going as they had planned it. Was this the road to a rocky acceptance, or was this rejection? Neither of the siblings knew, and they were both outright terrified.

“Mom, Dad, it's still me,” Danny told them. “I'm still your son, Danny. See.” He transformed back into human form. He tried to approach his Mom, but she backed away violently, nearly tripping over the coffee table.

“Stay away from me,” she hissed. A look of hurt crossed Danny's face, but she presently ignored it. “ _My son_ isn't dead.”

“I – I'm not dead, though, Mom. I still have-”

“Don't call me that,” she declared. “You're just a thing, I don't want to hear you call me that.”

“I'm still alive! I'm only _half_ -ghost. _Half_ -dead. My heart still beats and I still have to breathe and – and-” he took a panicky breath, “I'm still Danny.”

“No you're not,” Jack grumbled. “You did show us; you're just some good-for-nothing ghost!”

“Just because I'm a ghost, that doesn't mean I'm not Danny! I'm still human!”

Jazz was too shocked to speak. She couldn't believe her parents were actually rejecting him, they were supposed to accept him. Why couldn't they just see that he was telling the truth, that he was still himself, despite that part of him happened to be a ghost. Jack and Maddie Fenton were never narrow-minded people, so why were they acting so obstinate?

“You speak lies!”

“Stop trying to convince us you're our son, you protoplasmic mimicry! You've shown your true colors!”

“Mom... Dad... _please_.”

Jazz finally snapped out of her speechless stupor. “Will all of you just stop!”

That seemed to do the trick, for about five seconds. Soon, all the attention in the room was brought back to her and her parents seemed to also recognize her as a target.

“Jazz, you can't seriously believe that this... _thing_ , is your brother?”

“Don't you ever call him a thing again,” Jazz replied in a low voice, glaring dangerously at her mother. “He is your fucking son, don't you dare try to deny that. Sure, he's different – he might not be fully human, but he is fully a part of this family. He's still a Fenton and I seriously can't believe the both of you are so prejudiced that you can't even see your own family through your hatred. We told you because we thought you'd accept this, but clearly, we were wrong.”

Jack frowned. “How can we ever accept something that's dead?”

They were supposed to be their parents, yet in that moment, all Jazz saw were a pair of strangers.

She was too off-guard to realize that her Dad had pushed her aside again, and that he was now in front of her, rather than safely behind her. He loomed over Danny menacingly, unmercifully ready to physically confront what he believed to be nothing more than a shell of his son. He grabbed Danny by the collar, and started dragging him towards the kitchen – the weapons! – and Danny was too shocked to consider phasing through Jack's grasp. Jazz tried to intervene, to rescue her brother, but this time Maddie stood in her way, preventing her from reaching her father.

Jazz thrashed against her mother as Jack pulled Danny towards the kitchen where all the weapons were. _My parents are actually trying to hurt my brother_ , she thought hopelessly. _How did it come to this? Why is our family so irreparably damaged and broken?_

As Jazz fought against her mother, she seemed to forget one important fact: Maddie was a 9th degree black belt. And despite that she was fighting her daughter, the deranged woman hardly held back. All it took was one sweep under Jazz's feet, and the sixteen year old's body dropped to the floor, her head hitting the corner of the table on the way down, rendering her instantly unconscious.

* * *

When Jazz awoke, she was sitting up in a chair, arms tied tightly together behind her back. Through her disorientated state, she had trouble discerning where she was, and wondered if she had some sort of concussion. She definitely felt like her head was burning from the inside out, and that her brain was growing so large within her head that parts of it was about to start churning out her ears. She heard some sort of metallic clicking, and it took her about a minute to realize that she wasn't imaging the sound, and that it was actually real.

Wait, where was she again? She hadn't figured that out, had she? Everything was a pain to think about. Couldn't she just go back to bed with Bearbert Einstein? Why was she even sitting up?

Trying to find out more about where she was, Jazz slowly looked around and found nothing but dim lighting. Her eyes found many objects and shapes, but failed to connect them with any meaning, until, something clicked.

It was fear.

A cold fear for her brother ran through her veins, reminding her of the unforeseen events that had led her to this situation. Danny confessed to their parents, and they rejected him. Jack dragged him into the kitchen, while Maddie had knocked Jazz off her feet. And then... then what? There were so many blanks in Jazz's memory that she was frustratingly unable to fill.

She heard a voice somewhere behind her, and realized startlingly that she wasn't alone. She couldn't see anyone else, and was only positioned to see a corner of the lab.

“Jack, are you sure the gag will hold?” her mother asked. Gag? She wasn't gagged. What was Mom talking about?

“If it doesn't we can just stuff it back down in his mouth,” her father replied. “Hopefully it won't be a problem with that wailing power he has.”

“I think he has be in that other form to use that power, though,” Maddie replied. “From the readings we've taken, it's clear he can't use any of his complicated attacks when he's in this disguise.”

“That's true, but now I think maybe we should take a few more precautionary measures. It wouldn't be that difficult to sever his vocal cords, don't you think?”

Jazz's mind reeled. What the hell where they talking about? Nothing was making sense anymore. Gags? Severing vocal cords? Other forms... disguises....

No. _That_ couldn't be what was happening. Her parents wouldn't, they would never! Not their own son! There had to be some other explanation, but what would it be? From the sound of the conversation, her parents were talking about... severing her brother's vocal cords so he wouldn't be able to scream. She didn't want to believe her ears, after all, she had a concussion (she thought), so there was the possibility that she was wrong!

Deep down, Jazz Fenton knew she was rarely wrong about anything.

“I don't think it'll be difficult, no,” Maddie replied. There was another metallic scrape. “But I don't think we should do it unless it's absolutely necessary. I want to keep this specimen intact as possible before we start the real incisions.”

 _Specimen_. They were talking about vivisecting their own son. Something gurgled in her stomach and she felt bile slowly crawl up her throat, making her choke on her own vomit. She swallowed it back down shamefully, trying not to let herself puke all over her body. Her parents must've heard her awkward noises as she attempted not to vomit, and the scraping stopped.

“Jazz?” her father asked, his voice sounding inappropriately sincere. “Are you awake?”

“Go to hell,” she whispered, weakly. She couldn't believe he had the nerve to talk to her sounding so... gentle. So fatherly and caring, when moments earlier he had strapped his own son down to a metal table to rip him apart from the inside out. She didn't know how she hadn't seen it before, both of her parents were monsters. They were blinded by their hatred, and it was going to consume their entire family in the darkest way possible.

Jazz knew she had to escape her bonds, she had to save her brother from their parents' wrath. She tried to subtly loosen the ropes around her wrists, but to no effect. In a fit of frustration she tried to stand up from the chair while still tied to it, and only ended up tilting the chair backwards for a moment before falling back to where she was. She had to be capable of more, she had to save Danny from their parents.

_Their Goddamn parents._

“Jazz...” Jack said tentatively. She heard footsteps across the lab floor, approaching where she was tied up. “Sweetie, we're sorry, but you don't understand. That thing has been brainwashing you. We have to do this.”

“That's your _son_ ,” she croaked. “You evil, twisted, fucking bastard! That's Danny! You can't hurt my brother!”

“Danny has been gone for a while Jasmine,” Maddie spoke up. “I know it's hard to believe, but this is just an illusion of what your brother used to look like. It's hard for us too, but the truth is that Danny is dead, and there's nothing we can do to get him back. All we're doing is stripping this gross manifestation down and getting all of the data we can out of it before we destroy it.”

“You're the one in denial! Can you at least look at the facts before you do something irreversibly insane! He's not a full ghost! Danny's still human! He still has a beating heart!

“Which, according to the scans we've done, his 'heart' is majorly comprised of ectoplasm. The same is true with all of his internal organs and blood. He's a ghost.”

“You're not evil listening, you heartless _monsters_! Don't _you_ realize how screwed up this is? This is illegal, unethical, murder! You're killing your son!”

“But we've already killed our son,” Jack said, morosely. “It was our portal that killed him the first place.”

“We're sorry for making you go through this, Jazz, but we really have to do this. We don't have any other choice. Now that we know the truth about what happened to Danny, we have to make sure that his protoplasmic imprint is disposed of. And if we're going to get rid of it, we might as well dissect it first. I just wish you understood that this isn't your brother....”

“YES IT IS! YOU'RE CR-”

A thick pair of hands shoved something soft and dry in her mouth, preventing her from speaking. She thrashed against it and attempted to spit it out, but it was being tied against the back of her head. She felt her eyes bulge out of her head when she realized that she too, was being gagged. _No no no no no no no-_

“You'll thank us later, Jasmine,” her father whispered. “This is what's necessary. It's not ideal, keeping you down here like this, but we're afraid you'll get loose if we don't keep you under constant watch, and the last thing we need is you interfering with our work. Just... this isn't to disrespect Danny's memory. This is to preserve the Danny we knew and to remove this impostor.”

But that _was_ Danny.

Jazz continued to fight against her bonds and the gag, rendering her unable from communicating with her captors. _This wasn't right, all of this was so screwed up,_ she kept reminding herself. She didn't know the extent of the matter until her parents actually began the process of vivisection. She was turned away from the table, and could see the vague shadows of their forms on the wall, but had no visual indication of what was actually occurring.

“Jack, hand me the scalpel, please,” Maddie ordered.

There was a shuffling of hands and clinks of metal.

“Making incision... top of the sternum...”

There was a horrible sound of something digging into something wet and tearable, Danny's flesh being ripped apart. Within seconds, she was made aware of Danny's muffled screams that her parents flippantly ignored. His anguished vocation of pain and torture bit into the air softly; any coherent noise that he had the ability to make was promptly snuffed out by his gag. Jazz also cried out against her gag, protesting her brother's unimaginable hell.

The soundtrack continued. There was more cutting and slicing and digging into something wet, and the dripping of blood against metal. The stench of blood casually tainted the air, continuing to torment Jazz's limited sensory input to the situation at hand. Danny's injured screams never silenced, and Jazz eventually broke down into a fit of hyperventilation and sobs. This wasn't their parents. This wasn't their family at all. This was inhuman.

What did Danny ever do to deserve such pain? Why had Jazz failed as a sister, as his protector? This was never supposed to happen. This was evil. This was wrong.

There was snapping and screaming and something squishing and more screaming and also the sound of tearing something tough into smaller shreds. The shadows on the wall danced with the grisly poise of murder, bathing in the artwork of blood that they had created around the one thing that they had loved the most. What was family? What was science?

Why was this still happening?

Through the entire process Jack and Maddie narrated what they were doing with a horrifying precision and meticulous description with anatomic terms Jazz could hardly understand. Even when they stopped to take their damned notes, Danny never ceased screaming. Jazz was a failure for letting this happen to them, in fact, it was probably all her fault.

“Maddie, honey, the saw isn't plugged in. We'll never cut through these bones without it.”

“Oh, that's right,” Maddie muttered. “Here, I got it....”

The saw was the worst. The sound it made was like a demon, it's growling seemed to multiply and intensify the more thoroughly you listened to it. The sound of breaking bones was drowned out by it's roar and even Danny's screams of anguish seemed to fade in comparison. It was intimately deathly, and it ate Danny from the inside out like he was made of wet paper and tape.

When the saw whirled off, many minutes later, she realized that suddenly the atmosphere of the room had changed again. It took her a moment to notice over the constant, loud ringing still in her ears, but Danny wasn't screaming anymore. Everything was silent except for her own heavy breathing, and the faint sounds of Jack and Maddie moving around equipment and extracting samples from Danny.

Was he...

No.

She refused. But as the world had it, her worst fears were ultimately confirmed by ten petrifying words.

“I guess there's no need to dispose of it now.” Maddie's voice held near to no emotion. “Such a shame that it died off so quickly.”

Danny was actually... dead. And it was her fault for failing him. Her parents had done the unthinkable, and she had just – just....

How was she expected to come back from this? Danny couldn't be dead. It was a lie. Her parents had only _thought_ they had killed him, right? Danny was strong. Danny bounced back. Danny was always there for her.

But she had failed him and that's all that was real because everything had just happened and his blood was on the floor and guts in jars, _and oh my God they had killed him he was dead dead dead dead gone away forever unreachable-_

Jack cleared his throat. “It was truly something different for a ghost. Such a shame that it had to be Danny. But, it seems that maybe Jazz was right. It _was_ at least partially alive. Still, nothing but a nasty ghost in the head, though. Irredeemable,” he reflected.

They were killers. How could they admit that Danny wasn't all ghost, but still assume that he wasn't human? They were ignorant, foolish, disgusting, and they should both go to Hell.

Maddie sighed, “If only there was an ethical way to replicate a suitable specimen. We should've preserved our study longer, but we were too hellbent on exacting revenge for how it pretended to be normal for so long.”

“Yeah.” Jack agreed. “The only way we would be able to safely create another specimen would be to create a new ghost around someone with a similar genetic makeup to Danny's.”

“Similar...?” Maddie asked. Jazz couldn't see what they were doing, but she suddenly felt her already panicked and fearful mind go numb with a sense of pure terror.

Were they... talking about creating another halfa for the sole purpose of experimentation? Were they really so savage that such a thing was an option? She didn't doubt it anymore, after what they had done to Danny. And she was so, so frightened.

There was a movement of bodies, and she watched as their shadows on the walls approached Jazz. Were they going to let her go now? Why had they stopped talking, anyway?

Jazz didn't want to be let go anymore. She didn't want to see Danny's remains. She didn't want to know what was coming next, either.

She felt both of her parents' hands on her shoulders. The way they touched her felt affectionate, but Jazz tried to shake them off in distaste. She didn't want their blood-soaked hands touching her. Those were the hands that killed her brother.

_The same hands that dug into his organs and blood and snapped his bones and snipped and pulled-_

A hand pulled her pants up from her ankles. It was slender and small, so it was Maddie's hand. Jazz was too confused at the action to think to prevent what was coming next, so she was completely unprepared when the sharp needle was injected into her calf, somehow accurately puncturing a vein. She bit her tongue in surprise and tried to kick her mother away, but a sleepy sensation entered her legs moments after Maddie pulled the needle out. Why... what was-

She was paralyzed. They had just injected her with some sort of drug that had disabled the use of her legs. No matter how much she tried, her legs failed to respond to her. She could still move her arms, yet couldn't, because they were still tied together. She couldn't think straight. Why had her parents turned on her now? Were they going to kill her so she couldn't tell anyone about what they had done to Danny? It would make sense, but Jack and Maddie were scientists, they wouldn't kill their daughter.

( _But they just killed their son!_ )

Okay, maybe they would. But, as of now, they had no reason to.

No, she was missing something. She was missing something very important. What was she missing? Where was the explanation for why they had just paralyzed her?

_'Create another specimen... similar genetic makeup to Danny's...'_

There it was. The damning realization that shook her beyond all comprehension and led her to a hysterical breakdown. She couldn't believe that this was their plan now.

She was their second specimen. They had regretted killing Danny and needed a new halfa. And she shared just enough of his DNA that she would be the perfect replacement. They were going to make her half-ghost so they could do the same thing that they had done to their son. What a tragic ending to the life of Jazz Fenton. Murdered by her own parents in the name of unethical science.

She wanted to believe that she wouldn't go down without a fight, but there wasn't much she could do. They had disabled her legs, and tied her arms. She couldn't scream, and there was no one else who could ever help her. Danny was dead. He was actually... dead. Jazz was all alone, and she was left to be her parents new play-toy in the laboratory if all went to their sick, evil plan.

Her father moved her arms to where they were still tied together, but to where she was free from the chair. Jack then picked her up, bridal style and held her in his arms, looking down at his restrained daughter. She attempted to escape his suffocating hold, but was unable to move more than her torso and head in the circumstances.

“This is for the sake of knowledge, Jasmine,” he whispered. “We'll always love you, this you, even after you've become a monster.”

She screamed against her gag. It wasn't even a meaningful scream. It was just... pure, rampant fear and anger.

Her own fucking parents. What a joke. What a sad ending. What a cruel fate.

Maddie had pulled the power cord to the portal. It was empty now, just an empty tunnel into the wall, covered in loose wires and circuitry. The electrical smell combined horribly with the pungent scent of Danny's dissected remains that still lingered in her nose. She could see a dark, ashen imprint on the portal's floor and wondered if that's where Danny had been standing during his accident. This was where it all began for him, and this was going to Jazz's end. Because in her case, this was no accident. This was a nightmare and she had lost the ability to process what was false and what was real. Jazz swayed, as Jack cautiously walked into the portal, avoiding tripping on wires himself. He was still cradling her, and when he came to the spot where Danny had become Phantom, he placed a fatherly kiss on her forehead.

_Hypocrite! Killer! Heartless!_

He set her on a cluster of cold wires. She tried her best to force her body to move, but the drug in her blood refused to heed to her commands. Every second was a lost chance for survival, for preventing herself from becoming her parents' replacement half-ghost lab rat. If only she could speak, she could tell them to take Vlad instead of her. Jazz didn't want to die. But her parents' blood-lust was prone to consume her, as it had already consumed them and Danny.

Her mother plugged the portal's cord back into the wall. There was a loud clicking sound, and she saw it before she felt it. A green light consumed everything, and she was falling forwards... falling forward into something cold.

She was surprised that after many long seconds there wasn't any pain, and she realized that she wasn't where she had been seconds ago. There wasn't a gag in her mouth, her arms were resting harmlessly at her sides, and she could feel and move her legs with ease. There was something metal stuck to the back of her head, causing her mild discomfort. But she wasn't dying. What had just...?

 _The cold,_ she realized. She was in someone's embrace, someone was holding her gently. She murkily looked upwards to find herself looking into a concerned pair of striking green eyes. The two of them stared at each other before she realized that she was looking at Danny, as Phantom. And he was saying something to her. Something that she was slowly trying to understand. It was as if someone had ripped her lingual knowledge of English from her head and replaced it with spaghetti, and now she was slowly reclaiming her language abilities.

“Jazz! … Jazz!” he tenderly gripped her shoulder with concern. “Can you hear me, are you okay?”

Danny was... here. He was fine. And so was she, she supposed. Had anything actually happened? In fact, when and why had they actually decided to tell their parents Danny's secret? It was starting to slip from her. Had that been real?

“Wha – what happened?” she tried to talk, but her voice came out scratchy and low.

“It was Nocturne,” Danny said too quickly for her to process, “that dream ghost from a few months ago. He came back... and... he ended up trapping you in some nightmare. Sam and I escaped, but Tucker is still trapped in some nightmare somewhere.”

Her mind was failing to keep up with all of his words, but she got the gist of his explanation. None of it was real. It had been some sort of fear induced nightmare created by one of Danny's enemies. And Danny! Danny was alive, and her parents hadn't... done... _that_. Everything suddenly felt lighter, and the mental weight she carried lessened exponentially.

She clung to Danny, refraining from wiping the tears in her eyes.

“So... ghost did this to me?” Even to herself, she sounded wounded.

Danny looked down and nodded, “Yeah.” He strengthened their hug, strongly. Phantom's cool embrace felt more comforting that it ever had. “A – are you okay?” he asked.

“No,” she replied honestly.

Because even without Nocturne's interference, both of them knew that Danny wasn't the only one who had nightmares about their parents.

 


End file.
